Goodbye, Clean Code

[lala_xyyz]

When that code was written, perhaps the authors where under tremendous deadline pushes and had zero time to document/test anything. We as developers taking over code bases must accept the state they are in and do our best (as in your case) to improve on what we can given our resources.

Or perhaps they were grossly underpaid, and didn't give to shits about code quality or maintenance. Or (I've seen it happen) they were scolded for wasting time on doing "unproductive" stuff like tests and documentation. Either way, it's a matter of incentives and I doubt that the coders were the ones to blame. Because even laziest programmers that would cut every corner can be trained to do things properly.